In like manner slate of sundry colours is everywhere in manner to be had, as is the flint and chalk, the shalder and the pebble. Howbeit for all this we must fetch them still from far, as did the Hull men their stones out of Iceland, wherewith they paved their town for want of the like in England: or as Sir Thomas Gresham did when he bought the stones in Flanders wherewith he paved the Burse. But as he will answer (peradventure) that he bargained for the whole mould and substance of his workmanship in Flanders, so the Hullanders or Hull men will say how that stock-fish is light loading, and therefore they did balance their vessels with these Iceland stones to keep them from turning over in their so tedious a voyage.
Sometimes also they find precious stones (though seldom), and some of them perfectly squared by nature, and much like unto the diamond found of late in a quarry of marble at Naples, which was so perfectly pointed as if all the workmen in the world had consulted about the performance of that workmanship. I know that these reports unto some will seem incredible, and therefore I stand the longer upon them; nevertheless omitting to speak particularly of such things as happen amongst us, and rather seeking to confirm the same by the like in other countries, I will deliver a few more examples, whereby the truth hereof shall so much the better appear. For in the midst of a stone not long since found at Chius, upon the breaking up thereof, there was seen Caput panisci enclosed therein, very perfectly formed, as the beholders do remember. How come the grains of gold to be so fast enclosed in the stones that are and have been found in the Spanish Baetis? But this is most marvellous, that a most delectable and sweet oil, comparable to the finest balm, or oil of spike in smell, was found naturally enclosed in a stone, which could not otherwise be broken but with a smith’s hammer.
Finally, I myself have seen stones opened, and within them the substances of corrupted worms like unto adders (but far shorter), whose crests and wrinkles of body appeared also therein as if they had been engraved in the stones by art and industry of man. Wherefore to affirm that as well living creatures as precious stones, gold, etc., are now and then found in our quarries, shall not hereafter be a thing so incredible as many talking philosophers, void of all experience, do affirm and wilfully maintain against such as hold the contrary.
CHAPTER XIX.
OF WOODS AND MARSHES.
[1577, Book II., Chapter 16; 1587, Book II., Chapter 22.]
It should seem by ancient records, and the testimony of sundry authors, that the whole countries of Lhoegres and Cambria, now England and Wales, have sometimes been very well replenished with great woods and groves, although at this time the said commodity be not a little decayed in both, and in such wise that a man shall oft ride ten or twenty miles in each of them and find very little, or rather none at all, except it be near unto towns, gentlemen’s houses, and villages, where the inhabitants have planted a few elms, oaks, hazels, or ashes about their dwellings, for their defence from the rough winds and keeping of the stormy weather from annoyance of the same. This scarcity at the first grew (as it is thought) either by the industry of man, for maintenance of tillage (as we understand the like to be done of late by the Spaniards in the West Indies, where they fired whole woods of very great compass, thereby to come by ground whereon to sow their grains), or else through the covetousness of such as, in preferring of pasture for their sheep and greater cattle, do make small account of firebote and timber, or, finally, by the cruelty of the enemies, whereof we have sundry examples declared in our histories. Howbeit where the rocks and quarry grounds are I take the swart of the earth to be so thin that no tree of any greatness, other than shrubs and bushes, is able to grow or prosper long therein for want of sufficient moisture wherewith to feed them with fresh humour, or at the leastwise of mould to shroud, stay upright, and cherish the same in the blustering winter’s weather, till they may grow into any greatness, and spread or yield their roots down right into the soil about them: and this either is or may be one other cause, wherefore some places are naturally void of wood. But to proceed. Although I must needs confess that there is good store of great wood or timber here and there even now in some places of England, yet in our days it is far unlike to that plenty which our ancestors have seen heretofore when stately building was less in use. For, albeit that there were then greater number of messuages and mansions almost in every place, yet were their frames so slight and slender that one mean dwelling-house in our time is able to countervail very many of them, if you consider the present charge with the plenty of timber that we bestow upon them. In times past men were contented to dwell in houses built of sallow, willow, plum tree, hardbeam, and elm, so that the use of oak was in manner dedicated wholly unto churches, religious houses, princes’ palaces, noblemen’s lodgings, and navigation; but now all these are rejected, and nothing but oak any whit regarded. And yet see the change! For, when our houses were built of willow, then had we oaken men; but, now that our houses are come to be made of oak, our men are not only become willow, but a great many through Persian delicacy crept in among us altogether of straw: which is a sore alteration. In those, the courage of the owner was a sufficient defence to keep the house in safety; but now the assurance of the timber, double doors, locks, and bolts, must defend the man from robbing. Now have we many chimneys; and yet our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses. Then had we none but reredosses; and our heads did never ache. For, as the smoke in those days was supposed to be a sufficient hardening for the timber of the house, so it was reputed a far better medicine to keep the goodman and his family from the quake or pose, wherewith as then very few were oft acquainted.
Of the curiousness of these piles I speak not, sith our workmen are grown generally to such an excellency of device in the frames now made that they far pass the finest of the old. And, such is their husbandry in dealing with their timber, that the same stuff which in time past was rejected as crooked, unprofitable, and of no use but the fire doth now come in the fronts and best part of the work. Whereby the common saying is likewise in these days verified in our mansion houses, which erst was said only of the timber for ships, that “no oak can grow so crooked but it falleth out to some use,” and that necessary in the navy. It is a world to see, moreover, how divers men being bent to building, and having a delectable vein in spending of their goods by that trade, do daily imagine new devices of their own, to guide their workmen withal, and those more curious and excellent always than the former. In the proceeding also of their works, how they set up, how they pull down, how they enlarge, how they restrain, how they add to, how they take from, whereby their heads are never idle, their purses never shut, nor their books of account never made perfect.